Put a line of Elmer’s glue around the outside middle of the cup, and lay the crepe paper on top, sort of pinching it/scrunching it as you go.

When it’s done it looks basically like this:

Embellish the cup with a ribbon over the crepe paper. You can tie the ribbon with a bow, or you can wrap the ribbon around the cup, using a glue gun to glue down the two ends. (Later, I added a rainbow ribbon on top of the green ribbon).

Next, put a dab of glue from the glue gun on the ends of the pipe cleaner, to make the handle. Hold the pipe cleaner in place for a few seconds until the glue drys.

At last, the best part: fill with gold coins and rainbow colored candy!

Simple, right? This does not take more than ten or fifteen minutes to make.

I highly recommend the Such Pretty Things blog for Jessica’s beautiful photography (especially for lovers of all things pastel) and fun craft ideas. I will probably make her version of the paper party cups for Easter. I like how she covers the piper cleaner with ribbon and adds a cupcake liner to the inside of the paper cups. Very sweet and pretty touches.

A reminder: if you haven’t already, leave a comment on last Thursday’s Blog It Forward post for a chance to win an assortment of letterpress cards and other notecards from my stationery stash. I’m picking the winner on Wednesday.

Remember this great lottery ticket tutorial by Artmind? I’ve been turning it over in my head for a long time and finally decided it was time to try it myself. Since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up, I thought it might be fun to make a four leaf clover card.

The materials for this project are:

Cardstock
A heart punch and a circle punch, if you have them
Metallic paint
Dish soap
Paper plate
Paint brush
Contact paper
Glue

I followed Artmind’s tutorial faithfully except the layout of the card itself – mine is much bigger.

First I printed out the background design on cardstock. On a separate piece of cardstock, I printed out circles with secret messages and punched them out using my circle punch.

(“Sorry! A leprechaun stole your pot of gold!” and “Jackpot! Your treasure is hidden in the piano bench“)

I also punched out contact paper circles using my circle punch, and four hearts using my heart punch. Each card takes four hearts, one circle, and one contact paper circle.

Then I assembled the cards, glued the pieces down, and put the piece of contact paper directly over the circle :

Next, I mixed the paint and dish soap (two parts paint to one part soap) on a paper plate

And painted the circle in the middle of the card (remember, you’re painting on top of the contact paper covering the circle):

Now comes the hard part:

Waiting for them to dry!

I’d also considered making cards in the shape of a crystal ball or a Magic 8 Ball. You could do them as Easter eggs too. I bet you can think of a lot of possibilities.

If you want to see how cool these are when they’re done professionally, check out the Etsy shop Unless Someone Like You (they are temporarily away, but check out their sold items) which sells really neat ones as save the date cards.

This was a fun and easy project – you should try it! Big thanks to Artmind for sharing the original tutorial.